Ban these words, please

These aren't the famed "seven dirty words" or even words that have caused trouble for anyone in the media lately. But please, if we must ban words, let's start with these. Today's installment: words that should be banned from public radio. In coming days, we'll also include words and phrases that should disappear from television and print media as well. I'm not saying anybody should be fired for using these words; if they were, there'd be nobody left on the air.

1) Sort of

2) Kind of

(Eliminating those two phrases alone would make room for 30 percent more content on public radio.)

3) Arguably (Enybody who's been through as many divorces as I have knows everything, absolutely everything, is arguable)

4) If you will (What are you going to do if I won't? Get arguable?)

5) Um (Eliminating this one would make room for another 7 percent more content)

6) Support (If they're giving you advice or letting you cry on their shoulder, then go ahead and call it "support." If it's money, it's "underwriting.")

7) On the other hand (I know it's easy to imagine that every story has only two sides, but few do, actually. While Harry Truman may have longed for a one-handed economist in hopes of eliminating that phrase, journalists should go in the other direction, and become more like the many-handed Hindu god Vishnu. Or better still, the "television-handed ghost" in Amos Tutuola's book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:)


  ¶ 6:06 PM |